Nurse Hatchet
Nurse Hatchet is a Miss Nanny robot who works as a doctor in the Midwest. A pre-war relic who has been constantly operational for the last 210 years, she has developed a number of eccentricities and oddities in the way she functions. However, many still accept her medical care as they have no better option. History H4T-C3T was assembled as a standard General Atomics Miss Nanny robot and initially programmed for childcare. She was purchased by a pre-school child day care centre in Chicago, and employed to help look after their charges. On the morning of October 23rd, 2077, the centre was closed for the weekend, and as such, H4T-C3T sat it out in her charging cradle. Instead, she was activated by the automated systems on the morning of Monday, October 25th, ready for work. The situation she found was very confusing. None of the staff were present, and the centre was a mess. All the windows had been smashed and the rooms were full of broken glass and other debris. Realising that this was unacceptable conditions for quality child care, H4T-C3T acted in her programming and spent hours cleaning the building and preparing it as best she could for the day’s clients. However, none of them ever arrived. Furthermore, she observed a great deal of disturbance going on outside the centre. Assuming that there was some sort of riot going on, she did her best to secure the facility and await further instructions. However, no staff or clients arrived at all that day. Or, for that matter, the next, or the one after it. By the end of the week, H4T-C3T had begun to grow concerned, but her programming demanded that she remain in place until she received new instructions. And so, H4T-C3T stayed on-site for several months, doing her best to look after the centre and keep it ready for whatever clients might arrive, even as civilization collapsed around her. On several occasions, she did need to deal with trespassers who had broken into the center to steal food or equipment, which proved to be somewhat distressing but was still a part of her job. Afterwards she cleaned up the bodies in order to ensure that the centre remained tidy and acceptable for use. After nearly two months without seeing any clients or staff, H4T-C3T began to become concerned. She was due for her regular servicing (it was timed to coincide with the Christmas break), and there was nobody available to take her to the nearest General Atomics sales and service centre. Reaching the conclusion that her own functionality was vital to the continued operation of the centre, she reluctantly took the decision to set out for the nearest service centre herself. After leaving a note on one of the terminals for any staff who might return H4T-C3T left the childcare centre and set out through Chicago. What she found was most distressing. The city seemed to have suffered a complete collapse of law and order, with groups of armed men wandering the streets. Furthermore, many of the buildings she passed were suffering varying degrees of damage, possibly the consequence of the same civil disruptions she was seeing. Finally, and perhaps the most worrying to her, none of the city’s utilities seemed to be doing their job. Power was off in many areas, snow was piled high on the streets and garbage (and dead bodies) was obviously not being collected. Despite these challenges to her sensibilities, H4T-C3T made it to the General Atomics Sales and service centre. However, once there, she found that the building was boarded up and apparently without power. After spending two days waiting, she came to the conclusion that the service centre had gone out of business and thus she would need to find another one. This only distressed her more, as it meant that she would be away from the Childcare centre for even longer. None the less, she set out, heading south out of the city proper towards a suburban service centre. This one was found to be closed as well, while the next one she found had burned to the ground. After a week on the road, H4T-C3T encountered a family with children who were in obvious distress, being injured after their vehicle had broken down. Her programming required her to render medical aid; approaching the family, she was able to treat their injuries while explaining the circumstances that lead to her being so far from the city. In return, the grateful family offered to take her to a functioning sales and service centre. It was a lie, of course, with family realising that having a medical robot with them would greatly enhance their chances of survival. As a result, H4T-C3T stayed with them for over ten years as they moved around the ruins of the Midwest, remaining assured that they were going to take her to the service centre any day now. By this point, the family had settled down into a survivor community that lacked the technology and capabilities to maintain her. Furthermore, the group were developing an anti-technological bias, and many found the idea of a robot living among them to be unpleasant, to say the least. Faced with a dilemma, the head of the family chose to do the right thing by the robot that had served them so well and admitted that they did not know where the service centre was. After thanking them, H4T-C3T went on her way, confident that she would be able to be able to find a functional General Atomics Sales and Service centre. (The community would eventually merge with several others and evolve into a tribal group. Eventually they would join the Midwestern Brotherhood of Steel in the 2190s, by which point H4T-C3T had passed into their collective folklore as being some sort of nature spirit who healed the sick) Undeterred, the robot set out again to look for a functioning sales and service centre. After spending several years in the relative seclusion of the community, she found that conditions in the outside world had not improved any and instead seemed to be getting worse. However, she remained confident that she would be able to resume her duties as soon as she had the regular overhaul she needed. For the next three months she moved from place to place, providing medical aid to those who needed it. In the spring of 2090, H4T-C3T came across a General Atomics service centre in the ruins of South Bend, Illinois, that was still standing. Entering the centre, she found that it was not occupied by qualified service technicians, but rather a group of men and women who were suffering form various injuries. As she treated them, they explained that they were customers who were also waiting to see somebody in charge, and that they would happily look after her until the staff returned. H4T-C3T agreed, and spent several months with the group. While she remained in the centre, they would often go out to get food or other supplies. When they returned, they often had various injuries that they wrote up to misadventures along the way. The group nicknamed her ‘hatchet’, based on their attempts to intepretate her designation, and treated her well, seeing her as being vital to their ongoing survival. However, they also insisted she stay at the service centre while they went out to gather supplies, obstianly in case somebody finally showed up to help them. After one time when they had come back with no ‘supplies’ and badly injured, Hatchet insisted that she follow them next time to ensure their safety. The group refused, saying that it was still important that she stay there. However, after they left on their next ‘shopping trip’ with several of them still injured, Hatchet chose to follow them to ensure that their injuries did not hamper them. What she found was that her benefactors were, in fact, a group of raiders who had been preying on other survivors. Acting on her directives to protect her charges, Hatchet attacked the raider group and killed them all without hesitation. (Two hundred years pass...) In 2282, Nurse Hatchet was living in Rusty Springs, a community under the control of the Midwest Brotherhood of Steel, and serving as their medic. After a battle on the outskirts of the town, a group of Brotherhood Soldiers entered her surgery, bringing with them one of their own who had been badly injured. The soldier, Mary Durant, had suffered severe injuries to both her arms, with Hatchet deciding that neither limb was salvageable. Rather, she opted to amputate both limbs and replace them with the arms of a destroyed robot instead. The operation was deemed as a success, even if it left Durant a half-mechanical freak with identity issues and questions about her own humanity. Hatchet was ‘requisitioned’ by the Brotherhood and pressed into service as medical support for Task Force ILLYRIAN. Initially she served as a surgical assistant at Fort Newcastle, but as the Brotherhood’s forces advanced, it was deemed that she would be more useful in the field. In her characteristic style, Hatchet not only managed to save the life of numerous Brotherhood soldiers, but also violently dismembered Legion attackers on several occasions. She then preserved their remaining body parts for future use. Personality Nurse Hatchet could be best described as being eccentric. The core of her original personality and programming as a dedicated child care assistant remain, but have been in turn swamped by two hundred years of experience, accumulated knowledge, makeshift upgrades, necessity and many, many untreated glitches in her core programming that have accumulated over time. She is still driven to render medical aid to those in distress, although her aid often is compromised by a lack of resources and takes directions that would be seen as being unusual or even extreme. Unlike many other wasteland doctors who are little more than self-taught quacks, Hatchet does possess genuine medical skill. However, her distinctly end-result based processes mean that she takes directions that others would not dream of doing. In many cases, she does not consider the long-term consequences of her actions, and simply opts to take the most direct route available. Likewise, she will often deliver diagnosis to patients that are factually correct but also entirely unhelpful to them. A good example of this process comes from her efforts to save the life (and limbs) of Mary Durant, a Midwest Brotherhood soldier. After examining her injuries, Hatchet decided that the best way to help her was to amputate both arms and then replace them with limbs taken from a destroyed robot. While this process did save her life, it had long-term effects on her psyche as she came to see herself as some sort of inhuman, half-machine freak. While she is a self-professed medic, Hatchet will not hesitate to defend herself, her charges or whatever community she has landed in today if needs be. She will use violence and kill an attacker if they pose a threat. However, in the spirit of conserving resources (and a clear sign of her processes) she will also harvest dead bodies for organs or other parts for use in future treatments. Hatchet retains her programmed pseudo-French accent and still remembers her original function and role. Despite the evidence around her, she is convinced that the present situation is a temporary one and normal, functioning society still exists. This leads to any number of odd behaviors based around pre-war logic, such as waiting at a railway station for a week expecting a train to arrive, even if none have run for decades. This belief is the core of her behavior and guides her actions. Should she ever find a functioning General Atomics Sales and Service centre and undergo her regular overhaul (Which she is now nearly 210 years overdue for) she would then go back to the childcare centre and continue to look after it so it will be ready for staff and clients that are never coming because they died two hundred years ago. Assuming the building still exists, that is. Appearance Nurse Hatchet resembles a typical General Atomics Miss Nanny robot. She has a spherical body, with three eyes on mechanical stalks and three arms surrounding a central lift thruster. However, her appearance has suffered due to the passage of time and harsh conditions of the Wasteland. Her body is dented, and in several places shows obvious signs of makeshift repairs intended to keep her running after severe damage or system failures. Her white paint is chipped, faded and dirty, as well as being adorned with patches of rust. Category:Characters Category:Synthetics